The bodyguards hauled Butler Xu out the door like a sack of dead weight, and the suffocating tension in the living room finally began to loosen.
The sliding door to the side room burst open with a bang.
Auntie Song, in a flower-print apron, came rushing out with her eyes rimmed red, and dropped to her knees in front of Chi Xingran with a thud. “Mr. Chi! If you hadn't spotted that industrial alum in the ginseng soup, those black-hearted monsters would have killed the young master tonight! Let me kowtow to you!”
“Whoa, whoa—none of that, auntie!”
Chi Xingran moved fast, catching her arms and hauling her back up, grinning. “In these floral shorts and an old man's undershirt? I can't accept a grand salute like that. It'd take years off my life.”
The words were barely out of his mouth when his stomach let out a shameless rumble.
He had been running on fumes after half a night of chaos. He glanced at the decorative baguette sitting in the fruit bowl on the coffee table and shook his head.
“Auntie, can I borrow your kitchen for a few minutes? I need something hot in me before my stomach stages a rebellion.”
Auntie Song blinked, then hurried ahead to lead the way. “Of course! There's organic lettuce and sterile chicken breast delivered just tonight in the fridge. The young master eats light, so I'll get you—”
“Oh, spare me.” Chi Xingran tugged at the neckline of his tank top as he walked. “Chewing raw lettuce at midnight is rabbit food. I'm just a simple man. Carbs. That's all I need. Three minutes.”
The Zong family's main kitchen looked like it had been designed by a sterilization lab.
Stainless steel counters on all four sides, cold-white lighting, a sous-vide machine, built-in steam ovens... Everything gleamed, and nothing in the room felt like it had ever hosted an actual meal.
Chi Xingran yanked open the two-meter steel double-door refrigerator.
He skipped straight past the cold cuts on the top shelves with their foreign-language labels, bent down, and reached into the deepest corner of the bottom shelf—where an old plastic container sat holding a ball of fully proofed old dough, two wilted scallions, and a few heads of purple-skinned garlic still flecked with dirt. Half a plastic bottle of deep-golden rapeseed oil was wedged underneath it.
“Well, well. Somebody's secret stash is the real deal.”
Chi Xingran helped himself without ceremony, dragging a heavy wrought-iron wok out from under the counter and twisting the burner to full blast one-handed.
A blue flame roared to life.
“Auntie, don't chop the garlic—just smash it with the flat of the blade. It's the raw garlic juice I want.”
He dusted the cutting board with flour, kneaded the old dough smooth, grabbed both ends, and swung it wide. The belt of noodle dough stretched with a satisfying snap and slid into the pot of rolling boiling water.
Steam laced with the pure smell of wheat drove straight up at the ceiling.
The noodles tumbled through two boils; then he fished them out, drained them, and tipped them into a deep white porcelain bowl.
He piled chopped scallions and the smashed raw garlic on top, then dug two heaping spoonfuls of coarse chili flakes out of the container and stacked them into a tidy little red peak. It looked almost artistic.
He heated half a ladle of rapeseed oil until it just began to smoke, then sank his wrist and poured the screaming-hot oil over the top in one unbroken stream.
The raw garlic and chili flakes came alive in the heat, and a blast of scorched fragrance exploded through the hall, scouring away every trace of the room's cold, sterile scent.
Behind them, Dr. Chen, who was snapping his first-aid kit shut, froze mid-motion and swallowed hard.
And on the sofa—
Zong Wen, who had spent three days and three nights wracked by nerve pain and stomach cramps until his whole body had gone numb, felt his brow twitch sharply, twice.
The nausea from his chronic appetite loss was swept aside by that crude, oily, scorched fragrance. The long-withered ache in his stomach began to churn—and rose into something almost like instinct: a hollow, gnawing hunger.
He rose from the sofa with a stiff, unsteady motion, but his feet did not hesitate, carrying him on pure instinct to the kitchen island.
Chi Xingran had just tipped a little black vinegar into his bowl and was mixing it through. He glanced up—and there was Zong Wen's pale face looming above him, eyes locked on the chopsticks in his hand.
“Boss Zong, checking up on me?” Chi Xingran hunched protectively over his bowl and shuffled back. “Handmade labor here. Ten yuan to look, no credit.”
Zong Wen's throat moved. Not a single word came out.
Thirty years of old-money upbringing told him that even a second look at street food was beneath his station. But three years of hollowed-out organs were screaming otherwise.
Chi Xingran took in the man's lost, pathetic face, rolled his eyes, and for once let the wisecracking go.
He grabbed a second empty bowl from beside the stove, fished out the rest of the noodles with all the broth and chili oil, crowned it with a spoonful of crisp chili, and shoved it across the marble counter in front of Zong Wen.
“All right, all right. I get it—vast family business, can't even scrape together a hot meal. God knows why I bother talking. Dying of dignity while suffering for it, that's you. Fine, this one's on me. But you're knocking five hundred off the IOU. Chopsticks.”
Dr. Chen snapped out of his daze and scrambled over in alarm. “Mr. Zong! Your stomach lining hasn't healed—strictly no food per doctor's orders! Raw garlic and chili on an empty stomach will—”
Zong Wen did not even lift an eyelid. One backhanded sweep of that cold, hard presence pinned Dr. Chen in place.
He picked up the bamboo chopsticks, knuckles white.
He lifted a tangle of noodles, coated in red oil and minced garlic, and put it straight in his mouth.
Scalding carbs and sour-spice heat slid down his throat and slammed, crude and unapologetic, into his cold, cramped stomach.
The spices stung the raw lining with a faint burn, but the flood of calories drowned the feeling out. Three years. For three years his tongue had known nothing but oil-free, salt-free boiled chicken breast and bitter pills, until he had dried out like a block of dead wood.
The cold light in Zong Wen's eyes flickered.
Then, under the gazes of a room that had all but stopped breathing, the head of the Zong family—every chew of every meal a masterclass in etiquette—forgot every stroke of the word “etiquette.”
One bite. Two.
He devoured those rough, chewy noodles like a man possessed, hot sweat sliding down his temples, color returning to his face like he was becoming a real person again.
Two minutes. A bowl bigger than his face, scraped clean.
Chi Xingran was only halfway through his own bowl. He looked at the bare gleaming ceramic across the counter and nearly dropped the noodles out of his mouth. “...Bro. Were you a starving ghost in your past life? Oh, right—of course. This young master's cooking is simply transcendent...”
Chi Xingran's machine-gun mouth kept firing, but Zong Wen was not listening.
His chopsticks cracked down on the counter.
A tidal wave of exhaustion crashed over him, sweeping away every wall of his defenses in an instant.
Zong Wen swayed violently. His eyes slid shut.
“Hey—finish eating before you fake-faint. No injury scams on my watch. I didn't drug you...”
Before Chi Xingran could finish, Zong Wen's tall frame pitched forward without warning.
That heavy, fever-hot head, trailing warmth, landed with a solid thump in the hollow of Chi Xingran's shoulder.
Warm, steady breath laced with the faint smell of spice and noodles washed against his neck.
“Holy—!”
Half of Chi Xingran's body buckled under the weight, and his bowl nearly hit the floor.
Dr. Chen's eyes nearly popped out of his skull. Six rotating medical teams. God only knew how many sedatives. A case of severe insomnia with manic episodes that no one could cure—and it had just been flattened by a street-stall bowl of oil-splashed noodles worth a dozen yuan?
Chi Xingran's whole shoulder had gone numb. He freed one hand and tried to shove the head off—
The long arm hanging in midair suddenly swept back of its own accord. A solid forearm locked precisely across the small of his back, five fingers closing as its owner treated him like a life-sized body pillow, hauling him tight into an unbreakable embrace.